Prof. Dr. Gitta Kutyniok new elected member of BBAW

The Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW) elected Prof. Dr. Gitta Kutyniok as new member. She received her certificate of membership during the ceremony on the occasion of the Leibniztag of the Academy on June 11th, 2016. The Einstein Professor of Applied Functional Analysis teaches and conducts research at the Technical University Berlin and at the Research Center Matheon. She is only the fifth woman in the Mathematics and Natural Sciences class oft he BBAW and currently the youngest member there.

Prof. Kutyniok, what does this honor mean to
you?

I am very happy being elected as a new member of BBAW, and this is a great honor to me. At the same time, I see it as an exciting opportunity to make new contacts and to get involved for the academy, especially on an interdisciplinary level.

The Academy has a special focus on the humanities. It persues research and offers advice on issues that are crucial for the future of society and provides a forum for dialogue between scholarship and public. What kind of tasks do you expect there?

The BBAW supervises numerous interdisciplinary research initiatives, including so-called academy projects and the TELOTA initiative within the Digital Humanities community, an initiative to bring together digital technologies and the humanities. Besides participating in events of the Mathematics and Natural Sciences class, I am therefore already looking forward in particular to getting involved in such initiatives and the ensuing discussions and challenges.

Prof. Gitta Kutyniok, born in 1972, studied mathematics and computer sciences at the University of Paderborn, where she also received her doctorate degree. After reseach stays at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Washington University in St. Louis and her habilitation at the University of Giessen, she was awarded a Heisenberg Fellowship to work at the US universities in Princeton, Stanford and Yale. In 2008, she was appointed Professor at the University of Osnabrück. Since 2011, the mathematician is Einstein Professor at the TU Berlin.

Her reserach focus lies in the modern area of Mathematical Data Science. This includes basic research as well as specific applications such as the diagnosis of cancer by proteomics analysis and magnetic resonance imaging in cardiology. For the development of the next generation of mobile systems, 5G, she focuses particularly on methodologies of the new area of compressed sensing. Kutyniok is well known for her pioneering work of introducing so-called shearlets in the field of image and video analysis. Using this direction-sensitive display system is for example a new basis for the reconstruction of missing image data. It is already being used and further developed worldwide by various research groups.
Gitta Kutyniok’s work has been honored by several awards. Among others, she received research awards of the University of Paderborn and the University of Giessen, the von Kaven Prize of the DFG and was Visiting Professor at the ETH Zurich in 2014.

The Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences is a learned society with a three-hundred-year-old tradition of uniting outstanding scholars and scientists. It currently has 173 Ordinary and 111 Emeriti Ordinary Members as well as 73 Extraordinary Members. Two personalities are Honorary Members. 50 members are women. With its membership, the Academy honors scientists with outstanding scientific achievements in their discipline.